72 back to the hotel. I spent part of the day visiting the extraordinary En- glish-language library that had be- longed to Field Marshal Kaiser Sham- sher Rana, who died in 1964. (The Field Marshal, who was an admirer of Kaiser Wilhelm, had changed the spelling of his first name from the fairly common Nepalese first name Keshar.) On my 1967 visit, the li- brary, housed in the Field Marshal's palatial residence, was being cata- logued prior to being opened to the public. I wanted to see how this project had fared. The library was indeed open to the public, and a few people were there using it. I wandered among the shelves for a while, and got the impression that nothing had been added since the Field Marshal's death. I t is a somewhat bizarre collection of books, ranging from "The Wizard of Oz" to an entire cabinet devoted to volumes on sex. It was, it is said, the largest private library in Asia. I noted that the stuffed tiger-one that the Field Marshal himself had shot- which on the occasion of my first visit was being nibbled on by a live deer who had wandered indoors, was still there, although the deer had dis- appeared. D EAR Lord, what a day! The ho- tel had been instructed to wake us at four-forty-five again, but for some reason all of us were phoned at three-forty-five. By 5 A.M., we were ready to leave for the airport. A special seven-o'clock flight had been arranged for those of us who did not get off yesterday, but by the time the dust settled and we were loaded on with our gear it was seven-thirty. I man- aged to get a seat just behind the pi- lots (Both of them were Nepalese, but the pilot had a black bag with a decal in English that said "No More Mr. Nice Guy.") This is surely the most spectacular mountain flight in the world. The plane flies close to the eastern range of the Himalaya; as it goes east, the peaks get higher, culmi- nating in the spectacular mountains around Everest: Lhotse, which, at twenty-seven thousand nine hundred and forty feet, is the fourth - hig hest mountain in the world, and, a little farther away, Makalu (at twenty- seven thousand seven hundred and sixty-six feet, fifth-highest), along with an almost uncountable panoply of snow-and-ice-covered summits of ev- ery shape and size. It is hard to choose which way to look. The airfield at Lukla is still a grass and dirt field, and it is so small that the pilots land uphill in order to stop their planes, and take off downhill over a precipice that de- scends at least a thousand feet, to the Dudh Kosi River. When I was last there, in 1967, Lukla consisted of the field and a small Sherpa village perched below it. There was no tower, no airport hotel, no coffee shop. And while we were camped above the village in this field, waiting to be flown out, some kind of large cat-conceivably a snow leopard -visited our tents at night. One could see its eyes gleaming in a nearby sward. When I asked the Sherpas what it was, I was told only that it "doesn't eat yaks," and found that only mildly reassuring. The present Lukla International Airport and envi- rons have everything they previously lacked. There are innumerable small, innlike hotels (of uncertain quality) and also the very substantial and com- fortable Sherpa Coöperative Hotel, with hot and cold running water. I doubt whether a wild cat has been seen in the vicinity of the airport in years. After we landed, the first order of business was to rearrange our gear. We had worn our heaviest stuff for the plane trip, because the weight lim- its for carry-on baggage were very strict. I t was pretty snappy at nine thousand feet at eight-thirty in the morning, but certainly not cold enough to have all that gear on, so we repacked and began locating our Sherpas and porters, some of whom were at Lukla and some of whom had gone on ahead to Namche with the six members of our group who had come in yesterday. Next, we had breakfast- eggs and chapatties and coffee or tea. Then J accoux eXplained the facts of life. The original plan that he had worked out in France assumed that we would be in Lukla oJ! Monday, so we had lost three days. If we wanted to do the full program, he said, it meant that some of the schedule would have to be revised. In particular, instead of going from Lukla to Namche in two days, we must try to get to N amche today, first dropping six hundred feet to cross the Dudh Kosi at a place called ..d,l = L À. . 1,Jo. rYV =l- I! . ,. 4' j . .. -- · ., -: t.I' " ' · 'i'9. '-.! . ry. .:!$!: - - 'iHt< "..l ." 8IIIIØ ø8 FEBR.UAR.Y 3,1986 Phakding, which was to have been our first campsite, and then climbing up to N amche at eleven thousand feet, the entire exercise to take a minimum of eight hours. We all agreed that under the circumstances it was the thing to try, and set off at our various paces. In Kathmandu, I had bought a wonderful new guidebook to Nepal, written by two professors at Trib- huvan University, in Kirtipur- Trilok Chandra Majupuria and lndra Maju- purla. I treasure this guide for both its candor and its accuracy, and I am also very fond of the way its sen- tences capture the cadence of the way many Nepalese speak English. There is one paragraph, headed "While Trekking," which I had more or less committed to memory, and whose ad- vice I intended to follow fairly rigor- ously. It begins: By plane or bus you can reach your departure point for trekking. A new feel- ing can be experienced. Departure tIme should be usually early in the morning. Fix porters ahead of your schedule. Usually they are quite punctual. During trekking you should see that it is very important to maintain your trekking rhythms. It should be generally three hundred metres [nine hundred and eighty-four feet] per hour on an upward slope and four hundred to six hundred metres [thirteen hundred and twelve to nineteen hundred and sixty-eight feet] per hour for a downward slope. In a definitive book on the effects of high altitude, "Going High," the noted American climber and doctor Charles Houston suggests the follow- ing schedule: Take one "day" to reach five thousand feet. (He doesn't say what a "day" is, but from six to eight hours is a normal-to-heavy trekking day.) Then take one day for each two thousand feet up to ten thousand feet. Thereafter, take one day for each alti- tude change of between seven hundred and a thousand feet. This pace is much slower than the Majupurias' , but it was quite clear to me from the outset that our trek to N amche was going to violate both limits. The paragraph continues: Do not walk fast on the trail as it is harmful. Do not mind if any member of your group walks fast, you should be slow and steady at your normal pace. Porters like to walk quickly and stop frequently. Let them do so or ask them to keep pace with you, but you maintain your rhythm. Experience shows that you should not move very straight as it is tiresome. An- other hint given by porters is that your pace should be crisscross. These hints will not make you feel tired during the trail. In the next morning, the sirdar or chief porter gets up early and offers you hot tea or coffee which can be repeated if you want. Early hours begin with washing and clean-